The White House drumbeat is unrelenting: President Obama wants comprehensive healthcare reform -- with a public option -- on his desk before Congress leaves town for its summer recess Aug. 7.
"Don't bet against us. We are going to make this thing happen," Obama said this week during a Rose Garden appearance with his new surgeon general, Dr. Regina Benjamin.
Just back from a weeklong trip to Russia, Italy and Africa, the president said he did not want Congress to think he'd forgotten the issue. "I just want to put everybody on notice, because there was a lot of chatter during the week that I was gone," Obama said. "Inaction is not an option."
Republican critics have been quick to question why the rush, especially on a bill that could end up costing taxpayers $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. And one of the doubters is Maine Republican Olympia J. Snowe, a moderate invited to the White House today in hopes Obama can sway her to support the plan.
So why is the White House rushing? In part, it's a calculus that Obama's still-high approval ratings are likely to soften as his term lengthens. So, use your political chits while you have them.
But another compelling reason is that the 2010 elections loom. Already, Blue Dog Democrats -- those moderates from Southern and rural parts of the country -- are balking at supporting a bill they say costs too much and saves too little. As Democrats in other swing districts get closer to reelection campaigns, they too could have qualms about backing a bill that will mandate that every American get health insurance and will pay for it with sizable tax increases on the wealthiest of their constituents.
(UPDATE: Well now our good friend Thomas De Senso, the first
one to think of this, has completed his word-count analysis of the
Sotomayor testimony, and shown that those senators who said they were
so eager to hear what she had to say were actually a whole lot more
eager to hear what they themselves had to say. Check this out.
(More importantly, check outdiligent Thomas' stunning conclusions here:
Just on the fourth and final day of testimony -- as laboriously
transcribed in this space -- the senators allowed other witnesses to
collectively speak more than 5,000 words more on that one day than they
allowed Judge Sotomayor to utter during her entire time on the stand.
Talk about yada-yada!)
Yada yada yada. According to some politics blog -- we'll call it Top of the Ticket -- that's been publishing the entire transcript of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Sonia Sotomayor's Supreme Court nomination, the senators perched in their official comfy chairs behind their nifty nameplates said they're just so very pleased to have the nice nominee appear before them.
As if Sotomayor had a choice, assuming she still wants the robe job across the street.
They are so happy to see her, the committee senators said, because they are all so very eager to hear in her own words what she thinks and how she thinks and explore her all-American story from da Bronx.
One problem: According to an unofficial word count, these guys are out-talking the nominee.
Better than two senatorial words for each one of hers after only two days.
And that was before Arlen Specter opened his mouth for questions.
As of Wednesday morning, the senators had spouted 50,082 words.
In response Judge Sotomayor had been able to utter barely 20,000 words (20,728, to be exact).
Monday was the worst day: senators 23,175, Sotomayor 942.
Some "hearing." Maybe they ought to call it a "talking."
Here's how we know this: The Ticket's good friend Thomas De Seno has an outrageous theory that politicians love to talk -- more precisely, they love to hear themselves talk. These legislators, De Seno holds, are the kind of folks who say things like, "But that's enough about me. What do you think of my legislation?"
So De Seno set himself a tall task. Using The Ticket's transcript, he started counting every word uttered in this week of meetings. (Having processed all those words, we're going to accept his total without a Minnesota recount.)
And if you agree with De Seno's theory, you won't be surprised to learn that he's correct.
The Judiciary Committee members, lead by Democrat Chairman Pat Leahy of Vermont (see top photo), are not doing a whole lot of hearing at their hearing. They're doing a whole lot of talking at their hearing.
Instead, it's Sotomayor, and the watching American public, who are sentenced to do a whole lot of hearing at her hearing.
De Seno's fascinating numbers are all right here. One word, Thomas: Thanks.
These days, it’s expected — the theater of a Supreme Court nominee appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. One would think it’s a tradition that goes back to the early days of the republic. As it turns out, that’s not the case.
As we learned from reading the Judiciary Committee’s compulsively readable website, court nominees only began appearing before the committee in the last century. Harlan Stone became the first Supreme Court nominee to appear and testify before the Judiciary Committee in 1925.
Every nominee to the high court since President Eisenhower’s 1955 nomination of John Harlan has testified before the committee. And, yes, he used the name Harlan too, but as a surname.
History buffs might want to follow this link to the engrossing history section of the committee’s website, but we must offer a warning: You might forget to stay tuned to Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s third day before the committee. But that’s another reason to check out the Ticket as senators continue questioning President Obama’s first nominee to the high court. We promise to bring you up to date.
The proceedings will begin shortly.
-- Steve Padilla
Photo: Former President Gerald Ford, left, introduces Supreme Court nominee
Robert Bork, center, before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol
Hill on Sept. 15, 1987. Credit: Charles Tasnadi / Associated Press
The second day of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court will begin in about half an hour. Expect some tough questioning from the committee’s Republicans, who made it clear Monday that they have concerns about how Sotomayor applies the law.
“I will not vote for — no senator should vote for — an individual nominated by any president who believes it is acceptable for a judge to allow their own personal background, gender, prejudices, or sympathies to sway their decision in favor of, or against, parties before the court,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said.
Not surprisingly, committee Chairman Patrick Leahy of Vermont took an opposite view. “I would trust that all members of this committee here today will reject the efforts of partisans and outside pressure groups that have sought to create a caricature of Judge Sotomayor while belittling her record, her achievements and her intelligence. Let no one demean this extraordinary woman,” he said.
If Monday’s opening session felt a bit, well, canned, there was good reason. No one asked questions, and it was not a day for improvisation. One by one, the 19 senators read their prepared opening statements, followed eventually by Sotomayor.
Today, however, promises to be different. Senators will begin questioning the New York judge, and The Ticket will bring you continual news updates, along with commentary and analysis. So stay tuned. The proceedings begin shortly.
We'll be live-blogging right here again throughout her testimony.
-- Steve Padilla
As Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor looks on, Senate Judiciary
Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. greets her family on
Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 14, 2009, prior to the start
of her confirmation hearing before the committee. Seated, from left
are, her stepfather Omar Lopez, her mother Celina Sotomayor and her
brother Juan Sotomayor. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Periodically during this week’s Judiciary Committee hearing on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the Ticket will pause to share some history on the court and the committee.
In his opening remarks Monday, committee Chairman Patrick Leahy alluded to that history, recounting the key role the committee has played in the nation’s affairs. He spoke of the committee’s role in shepherding the Civil Rights Act through Congress and the panel’s work on various amendments to the Constitution. This work, he said, helped create a “more perfect union.”
Sotomayor, if confirmed, would be come the court’s first Latino justice. Leahy recalled the first time a Jew was nominated to the high court, which leads us to the highly readable history portion of the committee’s website, which offers up this tidbit:
In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson’s nomination of Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish nominee to the Supreme Court, embroiled the Judiciary Committee in a four-month debate. At the time of his nomination, it was not the practice of the Senate to hear testimony from Supreme Court nominees. Instead, the Committee conducted its own investigations, often in executive session and without record of their deliberations.
Brandeis, nevertheless, influenced the outcome the Committee’s deliberations by sending telephone and telegraph messages to the witnesses appearing on his behalf in an effort to rebut the staunch opposition to his nomination. The Committee reported his nomination, and in June 1916, the Senate confirmed his nomination by a vote of 47–22.
Leahy noted that, reflecting the anti-Semitism of the time, questions were raised back then about “the Jewish mind.”
If you like history -- and even if you don't -- you'll find the committee's website fascinating reading.
-- Steve Padilla
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis is shown in this undated
photo. Brandeis served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court
from 1916 to 1939. (AP Photo)
One of the antiabortion protesters tossed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor today was none other than Norma McCorvey, the Texas woman whose pregnancy led to the court's landmark 1973 decision legalizing abortion, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported earlier this evening.
At least three times during Monday's hearing, antiabortion protesters interrupted the proceedings by yelling. Each time, they were quicky escorted out of the hearing room.
Abortion is not expected to be a focus of senators' questions Tuesday, and Sotomayor's feelings about the issue are not well known. In her only known ruling on an abortion-related issue, she upheld a ban on federal money going to foreign groups that provide abortion services -- the so-called Mexico City rule.
As for McCorvey, after she lent her name to the case that had an immediate and drastic effect on the choices available to pregnant women, she had a change of heart, and has campaigned against Roe vs. Wade.
Earlier in the day outside the Hart Senate Office Building, she told the Journal Sentinel, "I'm here to overturn Roe and defeat Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court. She's unworthy of the position. She’s Catholic. She’s even unworthy of taking communion because of her pro-abortion stance."
The Supreme Court's decision in Roe vs. Wade came too late to affect McCorvey's 1970 pregnancy. By the time justices ruled 7 to 2 in her favor, she had long since given birth.
-- Robin Abcarian
AP file photo of Norma McCorvey from 1995 by Nick Ut
Possibly a very important policy change quietly emerged in the daily schedule of Vice President Joe Biden today.
Loyal Ticket readers know that, as a patriotic duty, we monitor the longtime senator's schedule with a close eye for detail because, after all, this man is only a heartbeat away from having to give a toast at a G-8 summit. We've especially noted Biden's innumerable "private meetings" that are closed to the press because, well, they're private.
And we've wondered aloud how this Democratic VP's private meetings with unnamed people on unnamed subjects differs from the private meetings with unnamed people that his evil predecessor had that got so many Democratic senators and representatives worried about nefarious secrets.
On one recent long weekend, the man who became a Delaware senator when his future boss, Barack Obama, was an inexperienced fundraiser of only 11, devoted an entire Monday to "private meetings" that are closed press in his Delaware home.
If that isn't dedication for the $208,000 salary.
Well, today's schedule, unlike many at the end of Biden's work weeks, contains no "private meetings." Not one.
Having spent Thursday traveling and successfully selling the nation on the so far hard-to-detect effects of the $787-billion Obama administration economic stimulus spending plan that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave them, Biden will show up for work around 11 today.
He'll join Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius in a roundtable to discuss only the rising costs of healthcare for people who own or work for small businesses. One suspects the absent president's ambitious plan to spend billions more to impose his healthcare reforms might also be mentioned.
OK, so figure an hour for the roundtable, maybe 75 minutes max. You can only talk about that stuff so long before requiring healthcare yourself. Fifteen minutes for handshaking, cellphone photos and congratulations on the excellent roundtable. The VP should be outta there by 12:30.
That leaves -- what? -- five, maybe six hours to make it a seven-hour workday.
According to the White House schedule, Biden will not spend the remainder of the workday in private meetings that are closed press.
Instead: "The Vice President will spend the remainder of the day in meetings that are closed press."
You get the difference, right?
(Friday UPDATE 7 p.m.: According to the VP's weekend schedule, if you need to reach him about the stimulus plan or something, both days he will be in Delaware where "There are no public events scheduled." No public mention of private meetings.)
These days, federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor is not in her New York chambers. She's not weighing cases or interrogating counsel or even writing opinions.
Instead, with hearings to start Monday in the historic, much-anticipated Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation process, Sotomayor is holed up in a small office in the Eisenhower Old Executive Office Building next to the White House.
A group of young aides and lawyers assigned by Team Obama poses mock questions based on research about each committee member's records. But mostly, reports CNN, Sotomayor is sitting quietly by herself, reading her back opinions, boning up on anything that might provoke a senator to raise a fuss.
"She's got to hit the books," said Thomas Goldstein, a D.C. appellate attorney. "They can ask you about any part of the law. And she's got to be ready for that."
In an earlier round of get-acquainted-sessions, Sotomayor met with 70 of the Senate's 100....
Well, this morning -- perhaps even as you read this -- Vice President Joe Biden is meeting at his secret observatory in Washington with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Of course, with President Obama out of the country as a decoy in Russia having breakfast with Prime Minster Vladimir Putin, the Biden-Clinton breakfast is, like all the vice president's many private meetings, closed to the media.
So we can only speculate on the agenda, most likely that the former first lady from Chicago/Chappaqua is giving the former senator from Delaware some good jokes for Biden's noon gig on Capitol Hill.
At that very special hour, according to Biden's White House schedule, the vice president will have the unique and special honor of swearing into senatorhood the new senator from Minnesota, likely the very first "Saturday Night Live" cast member to join that elite club of dark blue suits (and a couple of red ones).
On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met with the 315-vote-margin senator-elect and was clearly blown away by the fellow who will be the Democrats' important 60th vote as long as the other 59 continue breathing.
In his most enthusiastic remarks, even for someone from somewhere as uptown as Searchlight, Reid announced that Franken's coming would not by itself solve all of the nation's problems. For Reid's full text click here.
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is quite pleased with the arrival of his party's 60th vote that gives his party a filibuster-proof majority as long as nobody dies or Arlen Specter doesn't change his mind again this week.
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled on the long state recount, giving the Democrat a victory margin of 315 votes out of 2.9 million over incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.
But as great as the newly elected former Saturday Night Live comedian is already, the Nevada Democrat says the nation's plethora of problems cannot be solved by Al Franken alone. "We will need more than just his presence to effectively address all of our nation's challenges," Reid said Monday. (If you don't believe it, see full text below.)
-- Andrew Malcolm
Statement by Sen. Harry Reid upon the arrival of Al Franken in the United States Senate on the 6th day of the seventh month in the Year of our Nationhood 233
I am pleased to welcome Senator-elect Al Franken to the United States Senate. Senator-elect Franken ran a hard-fought, issues-based campaign and I know he will work hard for the people of Minnesota. But don't take my word for it. This is what former Republican Congressman Vin Weber had to say about our newest senator: "When people find out he's a smart guy who is serious about issues and a hard worker, they will be very pleasantly surprised."
Much has been made of the expectations of Al Franken joining the United States. I expect Al to work hard for the people of Minnesota, who have gone far too long without full representation. I expect him to help deliver the change this country demands as we work to strengthen our economy, ensure all Americans can access and afford quality healthcare, and make our country more energy independent.
I am confident Senator-elect Franken will make a difference, but we will need more than just his presence to effectively address all of our nations challenges.
The challenges we face are not Democratic or Republican in nature. They are America's challenges and they are too great to be solved by partisanship. Moving America forward will still require the cooperation and collaboration of Democrats and Republicans alike. The last eight years have shown us that the American people want us to work together. Democrats aren't looking at Senator Franken's election as an opportunity to ram legislation through the Senate.
In turn Senate Republicans must understand that Senator-elect Franken's election does not abdicate them from the responsibility of governing. That is why we have and will continue to offer Senate Republicans a seat at the table. It is up to them to decide whether they will sit down and work for the common good or continue to be the Party of No.
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Our Bloggers
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the Countdown to Crawford blog here at The Times.
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